Hanako's intentions come from a very good place.
A symbolic campaign representing a personal trial of life and death of lost loved ones. Unfortunately the very best of intentions doesn't necessarily translate to a good gaming experience.
I really wanted to like this game, I found the premise, the inspiration and the setting intriguing. On paper it looked like a confident and unique mix of "For Honor", "Nioh" and "Tsushima Legends". But unfortunately it didn't play out that way and was very disappointing.
Hanako was released into early access way back in 2017 and just received its full release 15th September 2021. Despite having 4 years of early access development the game has a lot of glaring flaws, all painfully obvious within the first few minutes of gameplay.
Presentation is hit and miss, You could quite easily forgive this as placeholder material in early access, but its pretty unforgiveable after 4 years. While the launch screen music and imagery are both great, the overall impression is immediately tarnished by the game font. A really cheap looking generic "Asian" font, like something you'd find on the packaging of children's plastic Ninja throwing stars from a dollar store.
While the animation is good, the character models look strangely disproportionate, with a long torsos and oddly chunky legs that look something like sausage links. "Ticc" as the kids might say.
I also found the controls slightly difficult to get used to. While it adheres to one of the more traditional formats of, trigger/shoulder buttons being light and heavy attacks. It then throws all conformity out the window by having to press the right stick in to swap stances. While I am all for rebellion and sticking it to "the man", my muscle memory is less revolutionary.
I found myself either pressing R3 in by conditioning thinking it would "lock on", or just mashing it with my mighty thumbs by mistake during the more frantic moments of gameplay.
All of these issues could be overlooked or become accustomed to, if it weren't for one enormous issue. For an online multiplayer battle game featuring support for up to 24 players, there is unfortunately no player base.
During my review time I was unable to get a game at all and finally gave up. Even the game gave up on me, telling me "No Match found, join our Discord while we grow".
Again this is a problem one could overlook for a new early access title, but for a game that's been out for 4 years it just waves red flags while screaming DOA. I checked against the Steam database and Hanako shows only threeconcurrent users for the day prior to this review...... three!
It might be worth checking back on this in the near future to see if things pick up, but after 4 years it probably won't.
Unfortunately I really can't recommend this game even at a discount, as you simply can't play it without jumping through hoops and trying to track down players in discord. You are essentially paying to play a short tutorial.
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